Lost Counties of Virginia on the mouth of the James River

Elizabeth City County was a

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

in southeastern

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

from 1634 until 1952 when it was merged into the city of

Hampton Hampton may refer to: Places Australia *Hampton bioregion, an IBRA biogeographic region in Western Australia *Hampton, New South Wales *Hampton, Queensland, a town in the Toowoomba Region * Hampton, Victoria Canada * Hampton, New Brunswick *Ha ...

. Originally created in 1634 as Elizabeth River Shire, it was one of eight

shire Shire is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand. It is generally synonymous with county. It was first used in Wessex from the begin ...

s created in the

Virginia Colony The Colony of Virginia, chartered in 1606 and settled in 1607, was the first enduring English colony in North America, following failed attempts at settlement on Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey GilbertGilbert (Saunders Family), Sir Humphrey" (histor ...

by order of the King Charles I. In 1636, it was subdivided, and the portion north of the harbor of

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James, Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point where the Chesapeake Bay flows into the Atlantic ...

became known as Elizabeth City Shire. It was renamed Elizabeth City County a short time later. Elizabeth City was originally named Kikotan (also spelled

Kecoughtan In the seventeenth century, Kecoughtan was the name of the settlement now known as Hampton, Virginia, In the early twentieth century, it was also the name of a town nearby in Elizabeth City County. It was annexed into the City of Newport News in 19 ...

and Kikowtan), presumably a word for the Native Americans living there when the English arrived in 1607. They were friendly to the English, but Sir Thomas Gates either worried about safety (including potential attack by the Spaniards and the Dutch) or coveted their corn fields after the "starving time" of the 1609–10 winter. The English seized their land while the men were out hunting, and for some reason, the natives never attacked the settlement in response. The shire and county were named for

Elizabeth of Bohemia Elizabeth Stuart (19 August 159613 February 1662) was Electress of the Palatinate and briefly Queen of Bohemia as the wife of Frederick V of the Palatinate. Since her husband's reign in Bohemia lasted for just one winter, she is called the Wi ...

, daughter of King

James I James I may refer to: People *James I of Aragon (1208–1276) *James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327) *James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu *James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347) *James I of Cyprus (1334–13 ...

, sister of Princes Henry and Charles. The town of

, established in 1680, became the largest city in Elizabeth City County, and was the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US ...

. Hampton became an

independent city An independent city or independent town is a city or town that does not form part of another general-purpose local government entity (such as a province). Historical precursors In the Holy Roman Empire, and to a degree in its successor states ...

in 1908, though it remained the seat of Elizabeth City County and continued to share many services with the county. In 1952, Elizabeth City County and the only incorporated town in the county,

Phoebus Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

, merged with and into Hampton. This merger was the first in a series of municipal consolidations in Hampton Roads that resulted in most of the area being split into independent cities. With few exceptions, modern-day Hampton encompasses nearly all of what was Elizabeth City County. The main exceptions are portions of Elizabeth City County that are now part of Newport News. At the time of the

Peninsula Extension The Peninsula Extension which created the Peninsula Subdivision of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) was the new railroad line on the Virginia Peninsula from Richmond to southeastern Warwick County. Its principal purpose was to provide an ...

of the

Chesapeake & Ohio Railway The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond t ...

, part of the western portion of the county became part of Warwick County. This enabled the entire southern end of the extension to be in Warwick County. The City of

Newport News Newport News () is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 186,247. Located in the Hampton Roads region, it is the 5th most populous city in Virginia and 140th most populous city in the Uni ...

was formed out of this portion of Warwick County, and in January 1927 the Elizabeth City County town of

was also annexed into the City of Newport News. Since English settlers occupied the former Indian village of Kecoughtan in 1610, and the town at Jamestown was abandoned in 1699, the city of Hampton now claims to be the oldest continuously settled English-speaking city in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

Historical Population

Notable people

Mary Cary Ambler Mary Cary Ambler (1732 – ) was an early American diarist. Her 1770 diary provides an early account of smallpox inoculation in colonial America. Mary Cary was the daughter of Colonel Wilson Cary (1702-1772), owner of the plantation Ceelys on ...

(1732–1781), early American diarist, daughter of Colonel Wilson Cary, owner of the

Ceelys on the James Ceelys on the James was a plantation on the James River in Virginia, built in 1706 by Colonel William Wilson. Wilson's daughter, Mary, married Colonel Miles Cary, Jr. of Richneck Plantation. Sally Cary, who married George William Fairfax, and S ...

plantation in Elizabeth City County, Virginia

Politics

Major communities in Elizabeth City County

Buckroe Beach Buckroe Beach is a neighborhood in the independent city of Hampton, Virginia. It lies just north of Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay. One of the oldest recreational areas in the state, it was long located in Elizabeth City County near the dow ...

* Fox Hill *

Langley Field Langley may refer to: People * Langley (surname), a common English surname, including a list of notable people with the name * Dawn Langley Simmons (1922–2000), English author and biographer * Elizabeth Langley (born 1933), Canadian perfo ...

* Plum Tree Point *

(before it became an independent city) *

Wythe A wythe is a continuous vertical section of masonry one unit in thickness. A wythe may be independent of, or interlocked with, the adjoining wythe(s). A single wythe of brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements an ...

* Aberdeen Gardens * Pine Chapel Village

References

External links

* http://www.virginiaplaces.org/vacount/elizaco.html * https://web.archive.org/web/20041217224246/http://www.hampton.va.us/police/about_us/about_division.html {{Coord missing, Virginia Former counties of Virginia History of Hampton, Virginia Geography of Hampton, Virginia